Veteran care will improve with Federal EHR updates

The Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) received critical updates this month enabling the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care teams to make more informed decisions that improve Veteran care.

The Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER), which was created by VA and the Department of War (DOW), provides an electronic record of each service member’s occupational and environmental health exposures over the course of their career.

Now available at the 10 Federal EHR live sites, VA teams can use ILER data to inform clinical decisions in exposure-related care and assess disability claims, improving accuracy and processing time of claims and benefits determinations.

“Having this important Veteran exposure information available directly in the Federal EHR is a significant improvement from having to search standalone applications,” said VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence, Ph.D. “By reducing the need to switch between applications and giving our staff members more efficient access to this data, they can spend more time caring for Veterans.”

In addition to the ILER enhancement this month, there was a series of other planned upgrades across the Federal EHR, including six capability and interface updates that were successfully added to further improve functionality and usability of the system.

The Federal EHR is now live at 10 VA Medical Centers and 55 VA clinics, serving more than 408,000 Veterans. Under VA’s accelerated schedule, the following additional Federal EHR deployments will take place this year:

June 6, 2026:

• Chillicothe VA Medical Center (Chillicothe, Ohio)
• Cincinnati VA Medical Center (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Cincinnati VA Medical Center-Fort Thomas (Ft. Thomas, Ky.)
• Dayton VA Medical Center (Dayton, Ohio)

August 2026:

• Fort Wayne VAMC (Fort Wayne, Ind.)
• Marion VAMC (Marion, Ind.)
• Richard L. Roudebush VAMC (Indianapolis, Ind.)

October 2026:

• Alaska VA Healthcare System (Anchorage, Alaska)
• Louis Stokes Cleveland VAMC (Cleveland, Ohio)

For more information about the EHRM program and the Federal EHR, visit the EHRM website.